PR Friday – 15 Aug 2014

PR Friday — Post your training updates, PR’s, and questions to the comments and the 70′s Big crew will respond.

Weekly Q&A gives you a chance to ask anyone from the 70′s Big Crew a question in the comments below, on Facebook, or Twitter. Follow 70’s Big on Instagram.

Recap: On Monday I posted an article that discussed the benefit of “External Hip Rotation in the Squat” and why a wide stance is not conducive to doing so. Chalk Talk #3 came out Wednesday and was a quick word on the importance of preparation in training, nutrition, and rehab.

In other news:

USAW finally increased the qualifying totals to its two national meets, the American Open and Nationals. This is due to the significant increase in lifters in the past few years (thanks CrossFit) and will allow more efficient meets as well as increased standards for American weightlifting.

Thor AKA The Mountain AKA A Large Man

Thor — AKA Hafþór Julíus AKA the giant man who played Gregor Glegane AKA The Mountain That Rides AKA The Mountain on Game of Thrones AKA the TV show of A Song of Ice and Fire AKA another chance for me to use AKA — won Europe’s strongest man.

46 thoughts on “PR Friday – 15 Aug 2014”

Currently following Travis Mash RBCP Weightlifting Program. It is a combination on Russian, Bulgarian, Chinese and powerlifting. So far it has been good and very challenging for me at least. I am training for University nationals this September as a 77. My lifts are 125 and 100 in competition. Training Prs are 130/106. This program has significant more volume then what I am use to and I have been Pr my doubles and over various complexes. My squat is currently at 161 for 5 and goal is to 166 for 5 before nationals. At work right now but getting off at a 1300 and will be maxing out with 1 pull 1 snatch and 1 clean, 1 front squat, and 1 jerk. Love this shit.

Previous 2 weeks I did WSFSB 3 – A nice, a very nice program but I needed something more exciting. It wasn’t the program, it was me.

Summer softball is over so now I’ve got more time for the gym. Never did an oly program so I chose the Basic Rep cycle from the Catalyst Athletics website. It’s 6 weeks. Finishing up week 1 and I really enjoy it. It’s got a nice balance. In 5 weeks I’ll be attempting prs.

For most of summer I did a strength circuit 2 x week of dips/chins/front squat/rdl. Day one was a 5/2/5/2/5/2/10 setup. The 5’s were explosive, the 2’s were a moderate weight, the 10 was with the explosive weight. Day 2 I worked up to a heavy double in each movement. The other 5 days I’d sprint hills, rest or play softball. I did this for 12 weeks. It really changed my body comp without changing my weight. My front squat went from 225lbs x 1 to 275 x 2 (disclosure: this was the 1st time I ever focused on the front squat).

Both situations would be a reason to go into a split template. I talk a lot about it in the TM: Advanced book, but the first flag is that there’s not enough room for relevant assistance work on the assistance day and light day.

If you’re feeling run down overall, then that might be grounds for a deload period too. I don’t really talk about them in the book too much since we usually do a good job of not programming too much stress to need it, but if you’re feeling worn down then don’t be afraid to reduce everything.

I’m currently following a 4 day, 12 week block weightlifting program written by my coach (a national ref/coach).

I did SS/TM in the past, so this is a lot different to me having volume split between weeks rather than days. In the earlier weeks on the highest volume/% combo weeks, I tended to be fried, but I also found I didn’t need more than 1-2 days of a light deload week before I was totally recovered. So I may still benefit from more akin to TM’s daily volume changes (which I successfully ran before this).

I was planning on competing at Uni Nationals @ 77kg, but they moved the deadline back for qualifying, so I can’t qualify now. I’m competing next week at a local meet and since I know I won’t make the AO totals in time I’m going to spend the next 6 months slowly moving up to 85, since 77 is too low to maintain for me.

I’m really enjoying this programming (squat day, snatch focus day, C&J focus day, lighter day w/ both lifts), as it’s fairly simple in terms of exercises and understanding the varying volumes/intensities. My squat has definitely suffered after going from 3x a week on SS/TM to only 1 day of back squatting now (although I’m front squatting another and doing cleans or snatches every day which is more squatting).

Either way, I’m glad I finally got a coach, and hopefully I can make Nationals, Uni and AO next year barring a large injury or something similar.

The first lift of the day is the different each time, and then there’s a squat/pull/technical piece associated with it and usually an accessory of some sort.

So an example of my current program:

Sunday:
Snatch
FS
Cleans from blocks or clean high pulls
KB Jerks

Tuesday:
C&J
OHS or drop snatches
Snatch high pull with a 6 second descent
Sotts press

Wednesday:
BS
Block Jerks
Russian Deadlifts (a mix of sumo/hack squats. Squat stance with a narrow grip but starting from below parallel, basically trying to mimic the FS position but with a pull. It’s taken from Pavel)
3 Point Rows (similar to pendlay rows, but from clean grip, snatch grip and a middle grip, all in one set)

The volume and intensity changes per week, with volume higher near the start of the cycle and intensity higher near the end as the meet approaches.

Warmups usually involve walking down the street with something overhead (KB, half filled keg, thick PVC pipe with water) or a farmer’s walk variation, followed by some KB swings. He’s had Pavel come and teach a seminar before, so they like to incorporate KB’s for warmups and stability as needed.

My coach is a national ref and teaches the L1 cert classes in the PNW, and as a result if friends with Zygmunt, Michael Conroy, Jim Shmitz, Pavel Tsatsouline and others, so he pulls a lot of his ideas from them and talks with them as well. His gym is self built off the side of his house, so it’s fairly small but has more than enough equipment, and ~15 Eleiko/DHS bars and enough plates. He pretty much does it for fun now rather than profit since he’s retired, so the rates are low compared to most coaches.

In the 4th week of 5-3-1 of cycle 2 as written by “outlaw power”. Kind of got roped into following it (loosely) with some friends. I am not sure how much strength I have gained unfortunately but my conditioning has improved greatly. Recent rep maxes were dead 390×8. Press 140×7. Squat 315×7. Bench 215×6. Bw averages around 172-173.

Its a good program but definitely for cf focused people. I don’t care so much about cf but do have to maintain conditioning for my job.

I’ve been attempting a cut this month and am down to 190 as an average at 15% bodyfat as tested by a handheld meter. That’s a new PR low for me.

I had an epic lifting PR week with the following increases

OHP – 145×5 to 145×8 on Monday
Squat new tested 5RM of 335 from 320 two weeks ago
Deadlift new pr of 530, from a best tested max of 505 a few months back. I’m stoked!

My “cut” training is RPT-style

Day 1: Deadlift/OHP/Weighted Chin up of 1 top set and 1 set at 90% of the top set with an added rep

Day 2: Bench

Day 3: Squat.

On day 1 I do back assistance exercises and lots of pistols as I’m working them heavily. Day 2 is all Bench assistance, Day 3 I do Front squats, single leg work, and hamstring work after squats. I also have been taking every 4th week “off” with 3×5 at 50-60% of max in the top sets and half of the normal reps on assistance. Makes a huge difference!

Question for Justin – in the TM Advanced you layed out a 5/3/1 and 3/2/1 progressiong for the deadlift. After exhausting the progression chart of 5Rm-3RM-2RM-1RMs and repeating – how well would a progressive rep-max pan out?

Example: week 1 you squat a 3RM, maintain the volume for following weeks and each Intensity day treat the 3RM like a maximal rep set. potentially progressing a 3RM to a 4 and 5RM over the course of a couple weeks.

Given that the Texas method is optimized for lifters making weekly progress – would this progression model be acheivable? or would time be better spent pursuing adding weight to the 3RM each week?

So today I decided to move to tripples, so I made a jump on 5kg on squats and 7.5 kg on deadlifts, because any lower jumps yielded decrease of calculated 1rm. This jump ended successful, although when I posted this idea on forums I recieved criticism. What do you think? Am I just lucky or was it reasonable?
So here are prs:
82 kg 21 y/o
157.5×3 squat (jumped from 152.5×4) felt unbelievably easy, maybe I’m not used to tripples or maybe I recovered well, or maybe its because this jump increased calculated 1rm only by 1kg. Also fixed form a bit by stopping going ridiculously low and instead just going below parallel. It feels better but I dont feel strong stretch reflex.
65×3 ohp planned to do 5, I fucking hate ohp and bench, they grow so fucking hard for me.
172.5×3 deadlift (jumped from 165×5) went easyer than expected
Overall good day, I didnt fuck up those jumps though ohp sucked, still at least did a tripple.

Also about routines, I did reg parks 5×5 cause I wanted to be just swole but then changed priorities and moved to SS and 4-5 weeks ago moved to TM and love it really much. I could continue SS though for some time but lower back couldnt handle it unfortunately. Best training method that I found usefil is the concept of linear progression. My friend that is crossfit PT told me that he heard it for first time and even in powerlifting world in my country people never use it. He couldn’t inderstand my fast progress lol. They usualy start by doing weekly progression I guess. Or maybe he isn’t correct, I don’t know

From a technical standpoint, I am very proficient in the Olympic Lifts. Strength has always been the issue for me. My coach and I have been experimenting with Squat first program very similar to the Texas Method. After squats, I move to 80% Snatch for a couple of singles and 80% C&J for a couple of singles. My coach gives me the latitude to adjust the % and reps depending on how I feel that day.

I’ve run it for about 10 weeks and am transitioning to squat everyday 4’s. In that time, I took my Week 1 5RM and turned it into my Monday 5×5 working weight.

Finally able to do some sort of horizontal press since irritating my AC joint a couple of months back. BB bench still hurts but I was able to do DB bench yesterday with no pain during or after. The DBs at my gym are metal, so I’ll get some magnets and use them to microload.

Gym also got a brand new York platform. The old one was totally fucked from dumbasses hex bar deadlifting on it. There was about a 2 foot space that was still semi-flat. I came in today and there was a flat bench sitting on it. I can already see small dents and scratches. This is a small town (think 5k people) gym and I’m one of 3 people who uses the platform correctly. If management doesn’t put up a sign, I’m bringing one myself. Something like, “nothing should touch the wooden area other than your feet.”

that is gonna be a tough sell! I was in a group meeting with a “health nut” woman at work and some were talking about losing weight… I mentioned that I have GAINED 20 pounds in the past couple years (now 195, still very lean) and by the look on her face, you’d have thought I said I just had my spleen removed or something: I guess the idea of gaining weight at 46 is universally dangerous to life and limb.

In all weeks I’m focusing on not having my form breakdown. I have tried higher volume programs and noticed my form suffers significantly.

A quick question, what is your opinion on using Olympic lifting shoes for powerlifting? I read a recent t-nation article about the differences between Olympic shoes and flat soled shoes but it didn’t seem to expand too far. Personally I really like using oly shoes.

Question for Justin: The other day on Twitter, in response to a follower saying they followed Field Strong from Crossfit Football/John Welbourn, you replied “Looks like a powerful program that’ll iron out a lot of muscle imbalances too.” I’d really like to know some more of your thoughts on the program. Pros? Cons? Who’s it good for? I was thinking of giving it a try myself, but I’d really like to know your opinion. I like their idea of a program “designed for the athlete whose goal is to increase strength and maintain the ability to display that strength dynamically across multiple planes of motion,” but I’m admittedly a bit nervous to commit to spending the money to find out.

Well, I can’t speak a lot about the program itself. I did some reading on it recently and it seems to have a good S&C program yet it’s accompanied by various prehab/rehab stuff that can iron out muscular imbalances. I mean, I’m assuming the rest of the program looks like that, and Welbourn is pretty good with this kind of stuff.

Oh, and it’ll have a fair amount of agility and sprint work, if I had to guess. Agility work is often lost on the CrossFit and modern S&C stuff because it takes time, but it’s actually good conditioning.

As far as the monetary expense, that’s a comparative advantage you’ll have to figure out for yourself. Do you like the idea of a program being laid out in front of you and giving you new things to do? Or do you think you can handle your own programming enough that you can get the gist of an experienced programmer?

I’d be willing to bet I could learn from the program, and I have a background in football, athletic development, and strength and conditioning.

Welbourn’s a good guy and programs well. You’d be in good hands if you spent the money.